Checked your
Oil Lately?
Maintain Consistent Quality in Your Fried Food with the
3M™ Shortening Monitor… Your Image Depends Upon It
The quality of your fried foods depends
on the quality of the frying oil. Cooking
oil will break down after prolonged use
affecting the flavour, colour and texture of
fried foods. Bad oil means bad fried food
and that hurts your business.
The 3M™ Shortening Monitor Strips can
help prevent poor food quality and
customer dissatisfaction. It’s a simple test
designed to measure the degree of oil
breakdown in deep frying vats.
The 3M™ Shortening Monitor objectively
and consistently measures one of the
major by-products of oil breakdown—
increased concentrations of free fatty
acids (FFA). When your shortening has
too much free fatty acids, the quality of
your food suffers.
The 3M™ Cooking Oil Monitor is a paper
test strip with four coloured bands that
change colour from blue to yellow as
the levels of free fatty acids increase in
your oil.
Just dip the non-toxic paper strip into your
oil at operating temperature (163°204°C/325°-400°F) and remove. In
seconds, the bands change colour to
indicate the degree of oil breakdown.
Because the 3M™ Shortening Monitor
Strip is a fast and accurate way to
measure oil breakdown, you can easily
develop procedures to help control
fried food quality and to insure
customer satisfaction.
Frying Oil Quality Curve
O-A
A-B
B-C
C-D
D-E
Break-in
Fresh
Optimum
Degrading
Runaway
At the same time, you can reduce cooking
oil cost. You no longer need to
prematurely discard oil to protect product
quality.
• Easy to use, easy to read and eliminates
guesswork
• Keeps all types of fried food quality high
• Helps save money by preventing the
premature disposal of oil
• Works equally well in animal, vegetable
or A/V blend oils
The quality of the oil as a frying medium and the quality of the food
produced in it are intimately bound. The five phases that an oil passes
through during the degradation process are explained below.
A. Break-in Oil: White product; no cooked odours, no crisping of the
surface; little oil pickup by the food
B. Fresh Oil: Slight browning at the edges of the fry; crisping of the surface;
slightly more oil absorption
FOOD QUALITY
C. Optimum Oil: Golden-brown colour; crisp, rigid surfaces; delicious
potato and oil odours; optimal oil absorption
D. Degrading Oil: Darkened and/or spotty surfaces; excess oil pickup;
product moving toward limpness; case-hardened surfaces
0
A
B
C
D
E
OIL BREAKDOWN
E. Runaway Oil: Dark, case-hardened surfaces; excessively oily product;
surfaces collapsing inward; centres not fully cooked; off-odour and offflavours (burned)
Source: 1988 Libra Laboratories
GOOD OIL
Optimum cooking means a delicious looking golden brown colour.
BAD OIL
Oil has degraded and food is dark in colour and unappetizing.
What does the
Colour Change
Mean?
The 3M™ Shortening Monitor is used by dipping the strip into hot oil until all four
blue bands are submerged. After the strip is removed, the number of bands
observed to change from blue to yellow indicates the exposure to a specific free
fatty acid (FFA) concentration. For instance, if the bottom band completely
changes from blue to yellow, but the top three stay blue, then there is a greater
than 2% free fatty acid concentration but less than 3.5% FFA. As an operator, you
can use the 3M™ Shortening Monitor test strips to determine the discard point for
your oil.
3M™ Shortening Monitor
>
7%
– FFA
%
>
– 5.5
FFA
%
>
– 3.5
FFA
>
2%
– FFA
1
2
3
4
*Free fatty acids concentrations indicated on the Shortening
Monitor strip are equivalent to those that can be obtained by
A.O.C.S. Official Test Methods Te la-64 and Ca 5a-40.
1. Cooking oil breakdown has
begun. Indicates greater than
2% free fatty acids
concentration.*
2. Check breaded food quality
(colour/taste, particularly of
chicken and fish). Discard oil
if unacceptable. Indicates
greater than 3.5% free fatty
acids concentration.*
3. Check fried food quality
(colour/ taste, particularly
of chicken, fish and french
fries). Discard oil
if unacceptable. Indicates
greater than 5.5% free fatty
acids concentration.*
4. Recommend discarding oil.
Indicates greater than 7% free
fatty acids concentration.*
Now Available...
3M™ Low Range
Shortening Monitor
When a more precise reading
of early degradation of oil is
desired, try the 3M™ Low
Range Cooking Oil Monitor.
This monitor
strip measures
free fatty acid
concentrations
at 1%, 1.5%,
2% and 2.5%, > 2.5%
– FFA
ideal for food
processing
>
2%
– FFA
applications
or to meet
%
>
– 1.5
FFA
regulatory
requirements.
%
>
1
– FFA
Product Specifications
Product
Number
Stock #
H-1004
70-0709-1690-6
H-1005
70-0709-7406-1
UPC
PKG
Case
Weight
Case
Cube
3M™ Shortening Monitor
40 strips/plastic bottle, 4 bottles/case
500-48011-25851-0
4/40
0.33
.044
3M™ Low Range Shortening Monitor
40 strips/plastic bottle, 4 bottles/case
500-48011-26416-0
4/40
0.33
.044
Description
3
Food Service Business
3M Canada Company
Post Office Box 5757
London, Ontario N6A 4T1
Canada
1 800-698-4595
www.3M.com/foodservice
3M is a trademark of 3M.
Used under license in Canada.
Please recycle. Printed in Canada
© 2008, 3M. All rights reserved.
0806-FS-2599E